Comment by saguro | Hacker News Reader

Comment by saguro | Hacker News Reader

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If anyone is wondering what greater harm comes from the advertising industry than just showing obnoxious images, it's this.

Consumers becoming so brain washed, so accepting of the advertising status quo that they actually defend it even though everything about it is against their personal interests.

> I don’t understand the entitlement

There is no entitlement, it's a right. I am exercising my right as the operator of this PC to connect to content providers and display their content however the fuck I want within the confines of the law. The law doesn't give them any right to extract revenue from me if I choose to opt out. If they have a problem with that, they have the right try to block me within the confines of the law. And I have the right to bypass that block within the confines of the law.

Let me put it another way. Your sentiment is way more pliant and ethical than the sentiment of the guys who run the ad industry. Your job history, drinking habits, sex habits, food preferences, mental health, personal aspirations, etc - all of this stuff is up for sale to anyone in the advertising circles. The only thing missing is your credit card number and name/address so it's not 'technically' PIA even though correlating all of it back to you is trivial and everyone knows it. I thought I was paranoid about ads, and then I landed a job in the ad industry and realized my worst paranoia was only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what actually goes on.

Don't defend the guys who are fucking you, stand up for your rights.

I’d argue you’re pretty much just ignoring my larger points and nitpicking very specific excerpts and ignoring the context of them to make a point that’s not entirely new in the thread then appealing to emotion with what was supposed to be jarring commentary but just comes across as ranting. I mean you spent something like 70% if your commenting trying to dissect half of a sentence in my comment.

And, I don’t appreciate being called brainwashed... this is barely a step above ranting about sheeple.

You points about my profile I guess are supposed to be alarming but are not news to me. I’m fine with all of that being for sale. Correlating it back to a person is trivial... until you try and do it at scale and evaluate the risk vs reward. Risk is very very high and gets exponentially higher at scale, and reward is almost nonexistent until you do it at scale. And are guards that add enough friction to make it not worthwhile often.

Sure there are cracks in the system, but seeing as I can’t pay what the content I consume is worth, I accept the risk gladly.

I mean, you're using moralistic arguments to defend a clearly immoral market actor whose entire business model revolves around abusing lack of regulations to collect and sell consumer information without their knowledge or informed consent.

You're defending a business entity whose entire existence is against your personal interest. In market terms, you are not a rational actor maximizing self interest. If you're not brain washed, what are you?

Just like businesses would be irrational if they didn't use every legal tax 'loophole' to make sure they pay no tax, you are irrational if you don't use available legal avenues to get the content you want for the lowest price - in this case, viewing it with ad blockers. If that means content providers go out of business, that's okay. New ones will show up with new business models that are actually viable. The free market expects individuals to maximize their self-interest within the confines of the law. If you're not doing that, you're just harming yourself for no meaningful reason whatsoever.

Again you spend so many words to say so little to address the actual topic at hand and instead shift the topic. This time to... doubling down on saying I'm brainwashed?

Ok, I'm brainwashed, thanks.

I understand your points, people don't want to pay (enough) for content, so content provider have little choice. I'd say it's the content-provider responsibility to market its content in such a way that people are willing to pay for it. That's what all businesses do.

If they can't make it, then it's no excuse to resort to creepy stuff like tracking and profiling people without their consent, or with them ignoring the extent or implications of it. It's nothing short of abusing people, and it being the last card not to get out of business is hardly an excuse.

You made a free mall analogy in another comment: if businesses can't run free mall without abusing customers, then don't run free malls; it's not like people always expected free malls, it's just that some companies began to offer products/content cheaper and cheaper, and now they hit rock-bottom. Whose fault is it? The customer for asking, or the businesses to enter a race to the bottom, and then going full unethical?

Again, I get your points, but don't track me, my friends or my family.

I thinks we need to remember the context of this conversation, I’m not against blocking tracking and not wanting to be tracked. I’m just against blocking ads then saying it’s taking the moral high ground and vilifying content creators who offer ads. I’m not even against blocking ads period, so long as we’re accepting the fact that it’s for personal benefit and definitely not “sticking it to the man”

The problem is we don’t have a protocol for signaling that they want to track you before you load the content and its tracking.

So you get the content, the tracking code, and detection for anti-ad/tracking plugins.

If they detect anti-ad plugins they say “We did give you the content, but we see you don’t have the form of payment we want so please don’t view it”

At that point, to me, neither side has done anything wrong. Would it be preferable if they could give you the “please don’t view it” message upfront? Definitely. But instead they let you opt out.

Once you decide to modify the paywall away and view the content you still haven’t done anything wrong but you’re saying “I want to view content paid for by showing people ads that was also designed to drive ad engagement but I don’t deserve to have to view ads so I’ll ignore your paywall since it’s my computer and you let me have the content” ... which is fine. And also won’t solve the actual underlying problem. Instead we just get an arms race of ad-block vs anti-ad-block (which anti will lose) and content creators hoping ad-blocking doesn’t reach critical mass.

The alternative is to turn down the content by going away. That sends the message that you won’t support the model. Bonus points if you pay someone willing to take your money in exchange for not tracking you since the most effective way to disrupt the market right now is to fund those trying to break out of the current model.

> At that point, to me, neither side has done anything wrong.

Well, tracking my mother who doesn't know enough about ad-blockers or the implications of being tracked is already wrong, to me. Collecting detailed personal information on people for commercial purposes should be strictly regulated, at the very least when it's done automatically.

> That sends the message that you won’t support the model.

We should send the most effective and unambiguous kind of messages: I like that content, but not the ad/tracking that you put on your site. That's much clearer than not visiting the site altogether (they might think they just have to change their content, or their marketing or sth). Some media are not fully aware of the crap they run, because it's run by a third-party, and the decision was made by another department etc. I don't necessarily want to send a bad signal to everyone there.

> vilifying content creators who offer ads

Not the OP, but the "brainwashed" angle applies to more than just ads.

Anyone with a Gmail account is effectively selling my communication with them to Google for a free service. And you bet that when told about this very few would see it that way. Consumers _are_ as guillable as they are ignorant. These new "established" online norms - be it tracking, profiling, ads, what have you - would've never flown in their physical form, but here we are in a world where Gmail, WhatsApp, Android phones, Google Analytics, etc. are considered gold standards of modern tech.

No sane person, if explained the exact ramifications of these "free services", would've agreed to any of them just 15 years ago. But they do now, giddily at that. Pray tell how this is anything but a brainwashing.

I wonder if this guy will look at this topic and all the counter arguments and downvotes and actually stop and ask himself if maybe its possible he is a bit brainwashed.

Half the comments are yours and aren’t counter arguments at all.

And all the downvotes just tell me people aren’t confident enough in their counter arguements to let them stand against a comment that isn’t intentionally de-emphasized.

And the fact you think I’d change my mind over downvotes, even in part, tells me something about you.

The answer to your question is: Because of hyperlinks (ie, the way the web works), it's not practical to tell people "hey, you clicked on the link, you agreed to pay them via advertising". A publicly accessible page is like a public space in that way.

If a company doesn't want to offer free access to content that costs them money to produce, they can create a login system and a paywall.

Which question?

If the one in the comments several levels up from this one, isn't this just a variation of the HTTP Status Code 200 argument? (which I explain why I don't support in other comments)

They can also implement ad block detection. Not every site is going to implement a paywall, they should have the option of business model and ad supported is a valid choice though I do hope more variety comes along to more sites.

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